2006: Charlotte Dawson at Pontoon for the Chandon Supper Club after party.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: TV personality Charlotte Dawson watches the game during the round 12 NBL match between the Sydney Kings and the Perth Wildcats at Sydney Entertainment Centre on December 29, 2010 in Sydney, Australia.

2003: Charlotte Dawson with her book 'Charlotte's Secrets'.

Media personality Charlotte Dawson smiles after getting slimed during the Nickelodeon Slimefest 2012 evening show at Hordern Pavilion on September 15, 2012 in Sydney, Australia.

A series of intersecting and stressful events formed the backdrop to the final hours of an already vulnerable and depressed Charlotte Dawson, who was found dead in her luxury waterside apartment at Woolloomooloo.

The 47-year-old television personality was coping with her two-bedroom apartment on the Finger Wharf going up for auction on Saturday, she felt she was not getting enough promotion for the Logie award votes for her former role as judge on the Foxtel reality TV series Australia's Next Top Model, and she had recently been setting up a homewares range.

On top of that, friends say she was struggling after the 60 Minutes tell-all interview with her former husband Scott Miller, whom she had confessed she still loved and would be the only man she would ever marry.

In her last interview just a week ago with Fairfax Media journalist Jo Casamento, Dawson had said she was unsure if she was strong enough to watch the interview which cavassed their failed marriage, his battle with the drug ice, criminal convictions for drug offences, stolen goods and prohibited weapons as well as accusations he was a pimp and a drug dealer.

''I continue to fight my depression - it's a bitch of a thing - and I fear watching something like this as it's the most painful time in my life,'' she said.

''I will be with a friend, but I am not looking forward to it. It was a painful time in my life and it might not be good for me. To me it's well over 10 years ago. This broke me very much. I had to go away for five years and leave this country and rebuild my life ... I've adjusted and moved on but it is still very painful.''

Whatever the trigger points, the troubled New Zealand born star was found about 1.20pm (NZT) on Saturday just a few minutes after her apartment was due to be open for inspection ahead of a 12 noon auction.

It is understood an agent from real estate company Morton and Morton, which was selling the property, found her.

News of her death was greeted with sadness by New Zealanders who knew her.

John Key tweeted: "Shocked and saddened to hear of Charlotte Dawson's death."

National Party MP Tau Henare tweeted she had been "hounded and taunted on social media" and he was "so angry to hear of her death".

TV3 host John Campbell tweeted "so very sad".

The 47-year-old - who became a television star on both sides of the Tasman - had a highly public battle with depression.

She was treated in August 2012 following a suicide attempt. She also struggled on social media where trolls viciously attacked her on both Facebook and Twitter.

Dawson's New Zealand television credits included chat show How's Life, Prime's Getaway and Charlotte's Lists. Across the Tasman, she was a judge in Australia's Next Top Model and a host of reality boxing show The Contender Australia.

It was hard in the spotlight for Dawson though and in January she announced she was pulling out of Australia's Next Top Model as a judge.

She made the decision after a holiday in Bali and tweeted it had been a great experience but added: "I truly adored my time on ANTM but my heart tells me I don't think young girls should pursue the modelling world."

When asked by a fan why she'd had a change of heart, Charlotte replied: "It's a brutal game. I'm out. I can no longer be a part of this machine."

She told Australian newspaper the Herald Sun Confidential: "I'm tired of the anxiety that comes with working in media, especially as a woman because you're scrutinized daily and abused about the way you look."

Despite this, Dawson was never far from the spotlight and on Friday she was tweeting prolifically about people suffering from life threatening cancer conditions and in particular a man suffering inoperable stomach cancer.

In her last tweets, she was telling her 53,700 followers that the plight of Lex Oliver was "a sad joke. So preventable, I've been lobbying this for ages but a dumb telly blonde nobody listens to".

Her last tweet 20 hours ago said: "We have the hospitals/resources & the doctors & professors willing to help. Where is the govt support?"

Dawson had spent her last 20 hours at Nine filming a morning show and later brunching with photographer Jamies Jamie while her apartment was open for inspection. The last known photos show her happy and smiling and walking in the sunshine.

Dawson's long term manager Mark Byrne paid tribute to her on Saturday, remarking how much people loved her.

"She touched a lot of people. She took me under her wing and was my first big client. She was a friend and mentor as well. She had an acerbic wit and such a media savvy mind - her brain ate media for breakfast," said Byrne.

After fifteen years as her manager, he knew her well and described her as a woman who knew how to take charge.

"She was a tough woman, she knew what she wanted and what was sad, that later no one tapped that brain."

"She was the queen of the acerebic one lines. I remember saying I dont feel as close to you anymore and she laughed" darling, that's because my face doesn't move.'''

Ben Fordham, who met Dawson on a weekly basis last saw her on Friday.

"It's just awful for the people who knew and loved her closely but also for those who knew and loved her form afar - they might never have met her but would have related to her because she was so raw and so real," said Fordham.

There were recent hints that all was not right with Dawson.

Earlier this month when Casamento posted a picture on Twitter of former fellow judges Alex Perry and Didier Cohen at the Astra Nominations for media personalities, Charlotte tweeted back ''guess I'm not nominated this year? Phewsies NOT to be subjected to another crushing defeat.''

It is understood that friends were already suspicious something was up, when the usually prolific tweeter and instagrammer had left her accounts dormant for 19 hours.

Dawson posted her last photo of herself about to go on morning television to talk sex. ''As you can see I'm racking my brains & have gone blank," she wrote. The picture had attracted admiring comments from followers saying how beautiful she looked.

At the top of her Instagram page she had also posted this poignant message: "Some people think to be strong is to never feel pain. However the strongest people are the ones that have felt pain, understood it, accepted it and learned from it."

BATTLE WITH DEPRESSION

Dawson was an ambassador for Angels Goal, a group to promote awareness and prevention of bullying in schools and sporting organisations and is a mentor for Community Brave, a foundation set up to eradicate online bullying.

Her battle with depression saw many media accounts on her, including reports last November that she had dropped her Australian management company after it said it was increasingly difficult to promote a client with a history of mental illness.

She had just been in a Sydney hospital following an anxiety attack.

She had received an email from Chic Celebrity Management this week saying her outspokenness on a variety of issues - including mental health - was undermining its ability to sell her "brand".

"I always thought that they were very supportive of my condition, I don't know what to say," Dawson said after posting an extract of the email on Instagram.

In the email, the company said: "The Chic team do feel that you are damaging your brand by many of the opinions you express and the intimate insights you give into your personal life, and we believe it is making it extremely difficult for Chic to generate business for you."

It said her brand was no longer seen as aspirational.

Dawson responded: "Brand? I'm a human & I share my highs & lows to relate to everyone? Is this what management has come to? Disgraceful."

In 2012, Dawson spoke about a sense of helplessness she felt as the target of online death threats, but had to fight back against the taunts, which eventually led to her admission to hospital.

In an interview on 60 Minutes, she said the experience was "really humiliating and embarrassing [but] I will recover from this".

Last year she confronted several of the trolls who had attacked her on Twitter for Australia's Seven News.

"The thing that I got out of visiting these people and them agreeing to talk to us is the fact that their online bravado is completely polar opposite to what they are, " Dawson said in the report.

In response to criticism that the TV report was pure publicity seeking and a form of bullying in itself, Dawson said: "I did the story... for a sense of closure and ownership. The message is that if you want that freedom of speech and you want to lash out at people, well, you can be easily traced and if someone wants to find you, they can."

After the television show she was taken to St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney after police were called to her inner-city home in Sydney at 3.05am local time, after many Twitter followers called for her to "please go hang yourself".

The television presenter said she had never experienced death threats of the "ferocity" she experienced on Twitter. She said when she returned home from a party that night in August, she was confronted with a stream of abusive messages, some of which said "stick her head in a toaster" and "kill yourself".

Dawson spent hours fending off the attacks, but signed off at 2.07am with the message: "you win x", with a picture of a hand holding tablets. She also tweeted: "Hope this ends the misery".

That was after enduring a barrage of tweets containing pornographic images, pictures of dead bodies, and vile messages.

Dawson said that the online trolls got to her. But the anonymous online attackers were cowards, she said. "If you're going to express those points of view, you should do it with a face and a name so that you can be accountable. It's the anonymity they celebrate because they think there are no consequences."

Dawson was released after spending two days under observation at St Vincent's Psychiatric Emergency Care Centre.

Dawson was involved in a public spat with television entrepreneur Julie Christie.

"There's a long history between us," Dawson told Sunday News.

"I've had run-ins with her before and I've absolutely not a shred of respect for her because she's a bully.